


two circles and three knocks

by fencesit



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen, POV Second Person, Reality Bending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-02 15:54:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21164228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fencesit/pseuds/fencesit
Summary: Wendy is at logging camp for the summer, but that doesn't seem right.





	two circles and three knocks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DesertScribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertScribe/gifts).

You have a job at your cousin's logging camp this summer. On your first day of work, your cousin takes you out to the first tree that needs to come down. It still has all its branches, swaying up at the top in a stiff breeze that whips up the mountain. "Well, Wendy, your dad said you'd know what to do," your cousin says, and stands back. Further back, at the campsite, you know everyone is half-watching, half focused on their own work preparing the new site. 

It's a test. One you can ace. You walk a complete circuit around the tree, first one way while you look at the roots and then the other way while you look up at the branches. Nothing off with the tree — plenty safe to cut down. You give the trunk three solid knocks with the back end of your axe just in case, and then you get to climbing. 

You're only maybe eight feet up when you realize your cousin is trying not to laugh at you. 

"What?" you ask him, leaning back against the strap holding you to the tree so you can look over your shoulder at him. 

"I just didn't think Uncle Dan's first born would be so superstitious." 

In second grade, you had been the first to understand that the class gerbil was dead, not on a special vacation. Your dad had just sat you down after school and told you: _The gerbil is gone, just like your mother._ And then he'd pulled you into one of his too-tight hugs. 

_In heaven?_ you'd asked, your voice muffled against his shirt. 

_No, _he'd said. _Just gone._ He'd pressed his face against the top of your head. He'd curled over you like you needed shelter. There had been no whimsy to it, only the cold, hard facts. 

You've been kind of angry about that for a long time, angry that your childhood hadn't been preserved, angry that he _hadn't_ lied to you, angry that you had been constantly and unwillingly thrust into the truth of the world, angry that your father had thrown himself into his work and dragged you and your younger brothers with him. 

_A little labor is good for you,_ your dad had always said when it came time for you to learn more and more of the woodcutters' ways, techniques passed down from before the time of Archibald Corduroy. It's also exactly what he'd said to you before sending you off to this logging camp for the summer. It's exactly what he'd said before he'd taught to to assess a tree, including knocking on the trunk. 

"I'm not superstitious," you tell your cousin. 

His eyes drift to the dent in the bark you'd made. He doesn't say anything right away and you start climbing so that he _can't_ say anything, but your back is still tense all the way up. 

Before doing anything with a tree you want to cut down, you circle it, you circle it again, you knock three times. Those were the _rules_, and if they weren't useful your father wouldn't insist on them. 

You can't remember why you have to do it, but that doesn't mean you're going to stop. 

Once, your cousin tries to have his crew skip it while you're distracted. You flip out. You absolutely lose your shit. Your hands sweat and your heart pounds. You shout things you don't even remember, your body moves on its own, like you're possessed by something greater. You cry a little. 

It's absolutely the least cool you've ever been, but it works. They let you check the tree, two circles and three knocks. Then your cousin sends you back to your bunk for the day. 

"Rest," he tells you. 

"Promise me you'll come get me if there are more trees to check," you demand. 

He promises. 

On Sundays, you have the day off from woodcutting. There's still all kinds of work to do, though — laundry and cleaning, hunting and cooking. You always volunteer for the long hike down the logging road, around the mountain, and then back up to the highway to the nearest gas station to buy extra gas for the week to come. It would be easier for someone with a car to pick it up, but it gets you out of the logging camp. 

You take the long way, a path that literally circles the mountain and takes you twice as long as it would if you took the steeper, more direct route — it gets you out of the forest, which has muggy air that never seems to catch a good breeze, giant bugs, and frequent cold spots that you can't bring yourself to enjoy. 

You like the woods, usually, but not this summer. 

This summer you hate them, and you hate your job, too, even though working with your dad to take down trees has always been an enjoyable challenge. Maybe the job and the forest chaffe because you had imagined your summer so vividly while you were waiting for school to end and a suitable job to appear: Thompson would have his mom's van most days, and Tambry would switch to her summer goth look; Nate would make plans for Woodstick and Robbie would hang around your place of employment too frequently for even the least plausible of plausible deniability; new kids would come to town and maybe you'd finally see what's in that old shut-down convenience store. You could taste the Pitt Cola. You could hear the rhythmic thump thump thump of you and your friends pounding on the well-battered roof of Thompson's mom's van. The smell of Robbie's sweatshirt, the way it would feel to press your lips against his lips, his keys jingling at his hips as you move closer, as you think about being alone with him for the first time that summer, and — 

— laughing and struggling when your loose hair catches in his newest piercing. Teasing him when he offers to braid your hair back and then can't remember how to do it. The summer sun coming through the old, old pines in the parts of the forest no one has ever dared to bring a logging camp to and the screech of Poolcheck's whistle, the laugh of a coworker, the grimey paper feel of your stingy boss paying you in cash and how it would have felt to hold it up to the light, trying to check if it was real or not. 

"Oh, no, whoops, not that one, Wendy!" a young familiar voice would say. The bill would be plucked out of your hand with a nervous, nervous giggle. 

"Must've mixed the stacks up," a rough old-new voice would have said with a chuckle, pressing a replacement bill into your hand plus a little extra to keep you happy. Not money — a coupon made of cheap newsprint, of course, encouraging you to recieve** ~14?% OFF* THIS WEEKEND† AT T ★ ◂ ▲ ◣ $ ◀ ? ◢ ⛛ ? ? ◤ ▼ ◺ ? ◥ ◬ ? ☎**

**✆**bbie picks up on the first ring, and you can feel the way he sucks in a nervous breath, maybe second-guessing if he should have left it for longer. Maybe it would have been the cool thing for him to pretend he wasn't waiting by the phone for you to hike all the way to this gas station and its pay phone like you do every Sunday, but you don't really like Robbie when he's acting cool. Robbie trying to act cool means _you_ have to act cool, and you are so not up for that. Not with the summer you're having. Not with the summer you're _not_ having. 

"I think I'm like, totally going crazy," you tell Robbie on this particular Sunday, and it's not an exaggeration. There's sweat on your forehead and sweat trickling down the small of your back. It's only mid-June, but it feels like mid-August, like you might roast to death right here while talking on the phone. There's no shade by the payphone, either, and you'd been too eager to get to your phone call to duck into the gas station and buy anything to drink. "There isn't even any Pitt Cola here, can you believe it? Just weird stuff, like 'Coca Cola', what even _is_ that." 

"Haha, right?" Robbie says. "That job is totally the pits, you'd think they'd at least stock a soda to match." 

He chuckles and you laugh, too. _It's the pits_, that's what you've been saying about this place, over and over. It was your joke. You change the subject. Tambry always throws a party at the end of June and you want to hear about her plans. 

"Uh, I don't know?" Robbie says. You can imagine him twisting the drawstrings on his broken heart hoodie. "I mean, I don't really talk to Tambry much, but I saw her yesterday and she didn't say anything so..." 

"Oh," you say, and wish you could twirl the thick cord of the payphone around your finger to give yourself something to do besides _think_, but it's made of that dumb segmented metal that doesn't even have the decency to be cold when you brush up against it. 

"Maybe it's just, like, not the same," Robbie says. He clears his throat. "Like, no party without Wendy Corduroy, right?" 

"Right," you say. 

"We'll have it when you get back, for sure." 

You don't say, _But I won't be back until the summer is over!_ because you know it's an irrational thought. There's nothing special about the second to last Friday in June. This year it's the day after the summer solstice, but that's meaningless. It's just a party, it's just a habit to break, it's just a poorly established tradition. Your dad will be taking your younger brothers camping without you for the first time later this week. You don't want things to change, but this is a summer that's about growing up, and working hard, and swallowing the lump in your throat so you can speak steadily. 

"For sure," you agree, and change the subject. You've been changing the subject a lot this summer, like flipping channels, like tossing and turning in bed. Everything rubs you wrong, lately. You sleep when you should be awake, you lay awake when you should be asleep, you hate the ka-clink of feeding your last quarter into the payphone, you're desperately glad the call will be over soon. 

"I wish you could come see my band play," Robbie says after he's given a detailed description of the songs they're going to play and the flyers he printed out. 

You say, "Yeah," but you know he's wishing you were there so he could look cool and impress you and anyway even if you were in Gravity Falls for the summer you'd have missed his first show to go camping. On that Wednesday night he'd be playing with his band and you'd be miles and miles away, lighting marshmallows on fire with your brothers, telling seasonal spooky stories to them, planning yearly Corduroy entry to the melon carving contest, settling into your sleeping bag at the end of the night without thinking of Robbie at all. 

The time runs out on the call before you're expecting it to, and you forget to say goodbye. 

Robbie's description of the venue is cut off. 

You hang up the phone and slouch into the gas station. On your first pass by the glass front of the store you glance inside, see that some of the guys from the logging camp are there buying beer, and walk straight past the door like you meant to do that in the first place, stuffing your hands in your pocket and taking a circuit around the gas station in a long, slow amble. The dumpsters are pretty rank, but it's worth it to avoid talking to your coworkers on your one day off. 

When you next round the corner to the front of the gas station the truck your coworker drives is gone, replaced by a Volvo wagon that you think you vaguely recognize from the Gravity Falls Swap Meet. The people at the flea market where your dad sells his old collectables are all weird as hell, but they're not the coworkers you're trapped with the other six days of the week, so you enter the store this time. The air conditioning is just as shitty as always. The man behind the counter looks up at you, and then back down at his magazine. 

That could have been me, you want to think, but you didn't apply anywhere that would have let you just sit around reading. 

There's a set of old, kind of cruddy upright refrigeration units in the back. You want to plaster your face against them. You want to hold the doors open and just savor the chill, dry air. You want to crawl inside and escape this summer. You'll get yelled at if you do any of that, so you just hesitate over your choice of drink. 

**COCA-COLA — $1.99**, says the shelf at eye level. **PEPSI**, says another. You've tried both and neither of them taste right. Neither of them taste like cola _should_ taste. 

"Hey," you call over to the cashier. When he looks up, you ask, "You ever heard of Pitt Cola?" 

The cashier shugs. And doesn't even look up at you. "Nope. What is that, some local Portland stuff? Usually those guys are making like, craft ginger ale and quad-hop lagers, I thought." He flips the page of his magazine. 

You shrug. You don't know. 

"Pitt Cola?" says the old woman who's been browsing the magazine stand. "Oh yes, _Pitt Cola_, of _course_!" She peers at you with huge eyes and speaks with a strange cadence as she hobbles closer until she's cornering you up against the drink cases. Her arms are almost grotesquely long as she reaches out to poke you in the chest. 

"Hey!" you protest, and try to swat her away, but she avoids you deftly. 

"Yes, you would remember Pitt Cola, _Wendy Corduroy_, you always walk widdershins first!" she exclaims, like poking you got her some kind of info. 

"Do I even, like, know you?" you ask. You glance at the cashier, but he's ignoring you even harder now, looking at his magazine. 

"The roots remember!" the old lady declares. Her voice rises and deepens as she speaks. "And you do, too, don't you? Knock three times, Wendy Corduroy! Lumberjack labor recalls reality!" 

"What?" you say, desperately trying to inch away. She's blocking you in. Is it a crime to just push an old woman into a shelf of Doritos? 

"Knock!" the old woman demands, but you don't knock. 

"_Knock!_" the old woman shouts, but you don't even understand what she means. 

"_KNOCK!_" the witch roars, growing several inches, shaking the building, shaking _you_, until all your panicked mind can think to do is form a fist and rap three times on the glass case behind you. 

"There," she says, and points behind you. "Pitt Cola is back." 

You turn and look. On the shelf between the Coca Cola and the Pepsi, there's a shelf of pink cans just like you've been longing for all summer. **PITT COLA** says the shelf. It definitely wasn't there before. 

"What the fuck," you say, and turn around to look at the woman. 

She points at the magazine rack. "Knock on that next," she says. 

"Explain yourself first," you counter. 

The old woman gives you a kind of pathetic look. "Oh, please, take pity on an old woman," she whimpers. Her lip wibbles, the best opposite of her comportment a few minutes ago. "I don't know how long it's been, I must have missed so many issues of _Crone Alone Magazine_. Do an old woman this favor, won't you? It's so hard to find a real lumberjack these days, one that still follows the old woodcutters' ways." 

You sigh, and step forward a little. The old woman hurries out of your way so that you can knock three times on the wooden magazine rack the woman had been perusing. This time you get to watch as the magazine rack blurs and contorts and then suddenly... you've knocked several magazines back into existence. _Crone Alone Magazine_ and _Gold Chains For Old Men Magazine_, and _Fully Clothed Women_. _Indie Fuzz_ and _Avoid Eye Contact Monthly_. 

"I subscribe to this one," you say, picking up June edition of _Avoid Eye Contact Monthly_. "I...forgot about it." 

"It didn't forget about you," the old woman says. "Buy your Pitt Cola, Wendy Corduroy. We have a summer to save!" 


End file.
